wHY is an interdisciplinary design practice dedicated to serving the arts, communities, culture and the environment.

The firm’s 25-person team, led by founder and creative director Kulapat Yantrasast and managing principal Misa Lund, encompasses architects, landscape designers, makers and strategic thinkers, who work as four independent yet interconnected workshops — 1) ideas, 2) buildings, 3) grounds and 4) objects. wHY’s team members and network of experts share a commitment to collaboration and approaching projects from many different angles to deliver holistic, sustainable solutions across scales. The firm’s projects convey clarity of thought and attention to detail with an openness and flexibility for the making of a dynamic experience.

The Ideas Workshop is wHY‘s think tank of new beginnings, leading investigations that generate fresh design programs, branding & identity strategies, and solutions at a variety of scales.

The Buildings Workshop makes fresh, creative and intelligent buildings that are game-changers for clients and their communities. Through a combination of craft and craftiness, wHY delivers buildings with value that far exceeds cost.

Equal parts making and learning, wHY‘s Objects Workshop is our test kitchen for ideas. From material investigations and whimsical art objects to furniture and casework, the products of the Objects Workshop are just as likely to hatch from an intriguing conversation as from an experiment gone wrong.

The scale of the work allows us to cycle rapidly through more experiments with a wider range of materials and methods than larger projects would otherwise afford.

The Grounds Workshop is an imaginative landscape and urban design studio that collaborates with architects, urban planners, and artists worldwide to cultivate and program future ecologies and open space.

wHY‘s goal is to connect people and lifestyles to a vision of healthy and resilient cities and environments. Through the seamless integration of building, landscape and urban environments, the workshop enables art, function, nature and structure to beautifully coexist.

“YOU NEED CLIENTS WHO ARE COLLABORATIVE, NOT COMBATIVE, AND SOMEONE WHO LOVES THE UNKNOWN AS MUCH AS THE KNOWN.”
- Kulapat Yantrasast

Kulapat Yantrasast

Founding Partner and Creative Director

Born in Bangkok, Thailand, where he graduated with honors from Chulalongkorn University (1990), Kulapat received both his M.Arch. and Ph.D. degrees in Architecture from the University of Tokyo (1993/1996), under a Japanese Government scholarship. Upon graduating, Kulapat worked as Tadao Ando’s close associate for eight years in Japan. In 2012, he was named one of the art world’s 100 Most Powerful People; in 2009, Kulapat was the first architect to receive the Silpathorn Award for Design from Thailand’s Ministry of Culture. He is a frequent public speaker at leading institutions and has served on the Artists’ Committee of the Americans for the Arts (the United States’ oldest organization for support of the arts in the society) since 2005. In 2015, he was appointed a board member of the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, and he is an active member of the Design Council for Collective Design.

Misa Lund

Managing Principal

Andrija Stojic

Design Director

Gregory Fischer

Design Director, LA

Mark Thomann

Design Director,GROUNDS

Bob Dornberger

Director, OBJECTS

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wHY is an interdisciplinary design practice dedicated to serving the arts, communities, culture and the environment.

As creators of spaces for creative and engaged living, wHY is always looking to hire people with diverse backgrounds, a passion for design and technical experience.